User talk:David Shepheard
Welcome to Wikia Hi David -- we are excited to have Spelljammer as part of the Wikia community! Starting a new wiki can be overwhelming, but don't worry, the Wikia Community Team is here to help! We have put together a few guides to getting started. They say imitation is the best form of flattery so absolutely check out other wikis on Wikia for ideas on layout, ways to organize your content, etc. We are all one big family at Wikia and the most important thing is to have fun! * Our guide to Getting Started gives you 5 things you can do right now to set your wiki up for success * We also put together some Advice On Starting a Wiki which provides a more a in-depth look at some of the important things you should consider when building a wiki * If you are new to wikis in general than we recommend checking our new user FAQ If you need help (which trust me we ALL do) you can access our full in-depth help at Help Wikia, stop by the Wikia Help Desk Forum, or email us through our . Also, you can visit our live #wikia chat channel any time. A lot of the veteran "Wikians" hang out here so its a good place if come if you want to get some advice or simply make friends. Now, go edit! We look forward to seeing this project thrive! Best wishes, — Catherine (talk) 21:29, 12 October 2007 (UTC) :Thanks for all your help Catherine. I've left a longer reply on your user page. I will definately check out all of those sources of information. I want to learn how to hack (not crack) all those wonderful wiki-gadgets that help pages look pretty. I remember seeing a great page on Wikipedia that had miniature graphics that butted together to make railway lines and want to make some behind the scenes things that can make this wiki look just as cool. :I'm expecting all of this to take several years, but I think it will be worth it. I hope you make lots of cash from the ads on the Spelljammer Wiki. David Shepheard 18:09, 23 October 2007 (UTC) ::You're more than welcome, and I'm here to help -- please don't hesitate to "bug" me if there's something not working the way you want it to. Good luck! — Catherine (talk) 18:16, 23 October 2007 (UTC) Greetings! I'm PanSola, a workerbee on Wikia Gaming stuff. I want to cheer you on for having started a new gaming-related wiki, and see if there is anything I can help a fellow Wikian with. I have been an admin on the GuildWiki for quite a while, and have hung around a number of different wikis. So if you need help with any thing, don't hesitate to ask! Some stuff of note: * Main Page design - It may be a good idea to make some of your main important content directly available and linked to from the Main Page. You can check out and borrow/modify a number of different layout designs from w:c:gamingstarter and various big wikis listed on the Gaming hub. * Logo ** For the quartz skins (default skin that most people sees) you can upload a 266 x 75 pixels image to Image:Wiki_wide.png. This will fill in the blank area at the top, to the left of the four links, with your image. ** For the monobook skin a number of users prefer to use, you can upload a 135 x 155 pixels image to Image:Wiki.png. This will replace the "This wiki does not yet have a logo" thing with your image. * Another user called Kirkburn also has some valuable tips for newly starting wikis. You can check them out here. * There is a Wikia gaming IRC channel, #wikia-gaming, where you can hop on, ask for help from users of other gaming wikis, or offer your own experiences. You can access it from http://irc.wikia.com/gaming . Different people may be on sporadically, but I'm organizing weekly chats at a fixed time so we can get the most number of people online at the same time to ask/answer questions, or just to hang out. The next one is going to take place this coming Sunday, October 21th. The time will be: :I'm hoping to have discussions on issues such as how the various gaming wiki communities may help each other out, such as exchanging experiences for community development, content organization, and attracting users. Hopefully I'll be able to get the admins and founders of some of the biggest gaming wikis (such as the WoWWiki) to come and offer their experience. If you happen to be technologically-adventurous, I can also help you with handy tools that can enrich the formatting and organization of the wiki such as templates, parser functions, and various . Again, if you have any question for anything at all, don't hesitate to ask me! -PanSola 13:46, 17 October 2007 (UTC) ::Thanks very much for your helpful suggestions. I've posted a longer reply on your user page. I'm looking at other wikis, but I think the gaming wikis, and especially the D&D related wikis, will be most helpful.David Shepheard 23:38, 23 October 2007 (UTC) BTW, here's something that should automatically update the time for the next gaming IRC chat: -PanSola 19:21, 8 November 2007 (UTC) Heya Glad to see you dropping in again (-: I was wondering, would there be a logical way for multiple RPG campaign settings to share a wiki? That way you can run a wiki with a broader scope, with you still focusing on the Spelljammer series, but also be able to attract more users (who are interested in other campaign settings) into editing the wiki (and maybe even get them interested in the Spelljammer campaign). I'm unfamiliar with the RPG circles, but if you think there are a number of campaign settings that has a logical connection and can fit in a wiki, we can see getting this wiki broaden in scope and attract more people! As sort of an example, each game in the Final Fantasy video game RPG series is like a different campaign setting (different world, even different combat/skill/job systems). But they manage to successfully share a wiki due to being in the same franchise and generally attracting players of similar interests (though some might hate certain games in the series with a passion...). -PanSola 02:14, 7 December 2007 (UTC) :Thanks for the suggestion PanSola. I did actually look at the idea of a general D&D wiki a long time ago. I understand how you can have something like Final Fantasy or Warcraft, where there are different interpretations of the same thing. (I'm not too aware of the Final Fantasy franchise, as I'm a role player, rather than a computer gamer. However, I know that in Warcraft, you have computer games, the multi-player game - World of Warcraft, a role playing game (a table top game with dice) that has had two editions, and some novels.) :The only documented connections between Spelljammer and other D&D campaign settings exists in Greyspace (which connects to the world of Greyhawk - aka Oerth), Krynnspace (which connects to the Dragonlance world - Krynn) and Realmspace(which connects to the Forgotten Realms world - Toril). :Planescape came along (after Spelljammer) and made its own connections back to Spelljammer. :Dark Sun and Ravenloft get a one paragraph mention, but are said to be unknown to the characters from the Spelljammer universe (or should I say multiverse). :The problem with taking this approach to a D&D wiki, is that some of the campaign settings actually conflict with each other. My main motivation for starting this wiki was to help people writing Spelljammer conversion material, to find canon material. So while a D&D mega-wiki might help someone interested in D&D in general, it would be less helpful to someone dedicated just to Spelljammer. :In certain cases different D&D books have conflicted with each other and this sometimes leads to fans of one setting dismissing another setting. Dragonlance, for example, originally had its own cosmology, was folded into The Great Wheel Cosmology and then split back off into its own cosmology. I can see a mega-wiki getting lots of edits and revisions over those sorts of issues. You have already mentioned the people who could hate some of the other D&D settings, and with D&D that is a reality, but I'd be more concerned by people who think stuff is wrong that people who know about stuff and hate it. In a mega-wiki the 'truth' might be defined by the majority, and the smaller campaign settings, like Birthright, Kingdoms of Kalamar and Spelljammer, might get pushed to oneside, by people who reguard the rules of these settings as continuity errors. (The other problem with a D&D mega-wiki is that if someone inserts some random fan-rules into an article, because they don't understand what 'canon' means, then there are a lot more books to skim through to try to track down the definition of the word. A one-setting wiki can attract dedicated experts in that single setting.) :When this wiki is largely complete (and as Spelljammer is out of print, that is an eventual possiblity) I'd be happy to help create some smaller SJ articles in a D&D mega-wiki, but I'd rather not merge this in with a mega-wiki project as my beloved Spelljammer setting would get lost in the flood of information from other settings that are much bigger in scope than SJ. I do think that each campaign setting needs something that is slanted towards supporting its own canon. There are already other places supporting canon research on other campaign settings, and for now, it is easier for me to try to locate ones I trust and add them in to external links pages. That helps readers to do further research on those settings, without me needing to vet information that I don't always personally understand. :In the time between me applying for this wiki and actually getting it, I had a lot of real-life things come along to eat up some of my time. So I'm still in the process of creating the seed articles, that I can use to suck in the other SJ fans. I hope to be doing a little bit more over Christmas. A couple of my helpers have also been more busy than they thought they would be. I'll have to give them a poke and see if I can at least get them to sign up - otherwise I'll be copying and pasting their work in on their behalf. I think I'll be in a better position to review my plan in 2008. As I get more article editors onboard, we will change my plan into our plan. We might end up working on a project like you suggested, or we might end up doing something totally different. :I'm going with your idea to an extent, because I'm going to take information from the SJ role playing game, the novels, the comics, the computer game and Dragon and Dungeon magazines. Some of this stuff is stuff, that I'm not personally a fan of, but it all fits in with the sort of larger approach that you were suggesting. :Thanks for your interest, PanSola. Even though, your idea isn't one I'd like to go that far along with at this time, I do think it is a very well thought out suggestion. I hope that when I'm more familiar with the system, I can make one or two suggestions that could help the other things that you are involved in (Guild Wars seems to be your main thing you write on). And, now my Internet connection has been repaired, I'll try harder to get to the wikia gaming chat. I'm especially interested in how tabletop RPG wikis can get found within the flood of computer RPGs. --David Shepheard 14:07, 8 December 2007 (UTC) ::Final Fantasy and Warcraft are actually quite different. Pretty much every single Final Fantasy game is set in a completely different universe, with completely different "rulesets". From your description, I would say that pick any two random Final Fantasy games (with rare exceptions), and they have less in common than the various campaign settings that have connections. In a matter of speaking, the common stuff shared between Final Fantasy games is like how "(almost) every fantasy universe has dwarves and elves and goblins and dragons in them", except Final Fantasy has its own custom set of things/themes. And just like elves from different fantasy universes have totally different backstories and characteristics (except the basic "fair-looking with pointy ears), "common themes/things" across Final Fantasy games are also not related to each other. The best example would be Cid. ::I can see your concern over confusion between different branches or inconsistencies of retconning. Thanks for explaining that to me. I am still hopeful that a meta one can work out with SJ stuff well-incorporated and helping conflicting information all be presented logically, but that'd require someone who has the vision to be constantly monitoring the project or at least invest a great deal of effort into setting up the protocols for handling conflicting information, and so that's probably not feasible at this point in time. Anyways, good luck and good skill with continuing developing the SJ wiki, and let me know if I can help with anything (wiki formatting, advanced template coding, using MediaWiki extensions etc). ::On a different note, one thing I am trying to do lately is to splitting the Fan Fiction and "Role Playing" wikis into their own subgroup. By Roleplaying here I wouldn't count the SJ wiki as one. Instead, it refers to people who document about their RP characters or the stories/histories they created while roleplaying, often on internet forums. I feel they have an even greater difference with the rest of gaming than the difference between tabletop RPG vs computer RPGs. One of my concern is I can't easily identify, or label, which ones are "documentation of campaign settings for published RPGs", and which ones are just "imagined worlds and characters invented by a small group of roleplayers". And not being a member of either, I also am not completely confident whether this division I'm trying to do is a valid/practical one. If you have any insights, that'd be greatly appreciated. -PanSola 02:43, 13 December 2007 (UTC) :::I did look around other wikis before deciding to apply for this one. I couldn't find an uber-D&D wiki out there. To be honest with all the mutually conflicting information in different D&D products, I wouldn't fancy getting involved in something that could easily be full of edit wars over details like the Planescape Cosmology vs the Dragonlance Cosmology. :::The category you are trying to describe for "fan fiction" sounds more like "homebrew" to me. I suggest you look that up and see if it matches. Homebrew games are very popular with D&D fans. This is a big difference from computer games, where you can make "mods", but are usually stuck with the original game world. Computer game modding is seen as unusual, but D&D campaign setting building was the norm when the game came out. :::Homebrew games are another reason, why I'd avoid starting up a D&D mega-wiki. A lot of D&D fans mislable things and claim that their work is D&D. I've even seen commercial d20 System products, like the World of Warcraft RPG mislabled as D&D worlds. Spelljammer - specifically Spelljammer canon - is a much easier subject for me to manage. :::Have a look at the Dragonlance Lexicon, to see the sort of thing I eventually want to achive with this wiki. I don't want other campaign setting stuff in with my stuff, because it will crowd my stuff out. I haven't got a problem with someone else making the uber-wiki and borrowing my work, but I won't have anything to do with that sort of project, until this one is mostly finished. David Shepheard 19:04, 16 December 2007 (UTC) :Just to drop in on this, perhaps if the super-wiki, as it were, had virtual sub-wikis? By that I mean that if you went to the D&D wiki and selected a campaign setting, that setting would have its own subordinate main page, and you could travel back up from it into the overarching D&D wiki or do deeper into the campaign setting. That might allow for more easily interlinked articles while still retaining the individual spirit of the campaign setting. It could perhaps also help prevent edit wars between the different setting communities. Currently on the main page of the D&D wiki there are already direct links to the various campaign settings. Oh, and David, I made you a wiki_wide logo. Hope you don't mind. Nagebenfro Founder survey Greetings! I'm trying to do a survey on founders of new gaming wikis. It would be great if you can take the time and answer the following questions (only need to click on the options unless you have additional info you want to type in). And please ping me on my talk page after you have filled it out. Thanks! -User:PanSola(talk/ ) 12:44, 25 February 2008 (UTC) :Your survey has been confusing my visitors, some of whom have attempted to fill in the survey too. It is also cluttering up my talk page. I've archived it at: User_talk:David_Shepheard:Founder_survey in case you want to see it. Looks like the data has been zapped, so I hope you got it. David Shepheard 03:40, 30 April 2009 (UTC) BTW, welcome back again (-: -User:PanSola(talk/ ) 12:44, 25 February 2008 (UTC) Thanks Thanks for filling out the survey, and also thanks for informing me of the page refreshing problem (I don't believe it is a normal behavior). What OS and browser versions are you using? -PanSola 23:51, 9 March 2008 (UTC) * Well, don't know about any other problems, but as soon as I answered a question it would take me straight back to the top of the page, and I'd have to scroll all the way down to the next question... Nagebenfro 18:34, 16 April 2008 (UTC) : I don't think this 'survey' was supposed to be completed by anyone except myself. David Shepheard 01:19, 20 January 2009 (UTC) Forgotten Realms Wiki Thanks for your comments on my talk page David. There will no doubt be some crossover between the two wikis because there was a lot of Spelljammer in 2nd edition Forgotten Realms and there remains some in 3rd edition and beyond. You're welcome to copy or adapt any of the templates from the wiki in order to help get started here. Fw190a8 16:56, 11 May 2008 (UTC) : Thanks for that. I'll reply on your talk page on your wiki. (This unsigned comment posted 19:16, 11 May 2008 by David Shepheard) Greetings Hi I'm a role player form the old school, i love ad&d 2ed, specialy spelljammer. I'm glad i can help a bit, so if i can still doing it count on me. I'm getting back to rpgs d&d and ad&d, so right nows i'm making a pirate adventure mixing real pirates, d&d and "magic" from spelljammer. see u later. (This unsigned comment posted 04:07, 17 September 2009 by JHCidblade) :Thanks JHCidblade. I've replied to this on your user page. :BTW: Don't forget to sign your user talk posts by adding four tildes to the end of your post (like this: ~~~~). David Shepheard 10:33, October 12, 2009 (UTC) Footer I mainly created the footer to group DnD related wikis for interwiki promotion. Some are just starting (or empty), and some are much farther along. But the footer is a Wikia thing, so only Wikia wikis would be in it. If the community at greyhawk.wikia.com wanted to link to the other wiki at Canonfire, they could do so, but not in a Wikia footer. I just looked at Canonfire and it seem to be a privately owned site/wiki. I personally see longevity problems with privately owned repositories of information, as is evident with the recent problems with the darksunwiki.com which was offline for over a month(and has tons of spam), and why I started a Dark Sun Wiki here at Wikia, if the owner doesn't keep up on payments all that info could be lost, whereas, at least here on Wikia anyone can backup easily. :--Sxerks 16:05, October 12, 2009 (UTC) :Thanks for your reply. I will reply on your page. David Shepheard 16:33, October 12, 2009 (UTC) Ad free Hi! Would you like this wiki to be ad-free? I'm looking for wikis to be part of a new program which would remove all ads from the wiki for $19.95/month. If you are interested, please be visit here to sign up. if you have any questions! - sannse (help forum | blog) 21:03, June 3, 2010 (UTC) :Thanks for the offer, Sannse. I might ask around the Spelljammer community, to see if anyone can give me a better deal than $19.95 per month. I really don't like the fact that Wikia are selling my content as books (as I think that could get me in trouble with WotC) and if I am going to pay to stop the adverts, I might as well switch to a host that can give me full control of the wiki. David Shepheard 03:53, June 4, 2010 (UTC) Testing signature Testing my signature. David "Big Mac" Shepheard (talk) 21:09, September 19, 2010 (UTC) Dungeons & Dragons Wiki Hello there! I noticed that Spelljammer Wiki is very quiet at the moment. You mentioned in the past that you had no interest in merging with another wiki, but: Dungeons & Dragons Wiki is large and very active, but it's "Canon Section", dealing encyclopedically with published material, like the articles here, also would need more active contribution. Maybe we could team up, move your content there and see if we could both benefit? What do you think? Daranios 14:48, April 5, 2012 (UTC) :The reason that Spelljammer Wiki is quiet is that I have, so far, been unable to get assurances from Wikia that they will change the licence on Spelljammer Wiki to prevent my work from being sold as fake Print on Demand Spelljammer books by third party publishers. I am concerned that this will get my wiki in trouble with the legal people at WotC. I am also concerned that unaware fans will end up getting ripped off buying books containing random text. I do not want to be getting a cease and desist over a project intended to help Spelljammer fans. And I don't want Wikia getting a DCMA notice demanding that they pull down all the D&D wikis as that would undo everyone's work. :I am opposed to a merger of my wiki with wikis for different D&D campaign settings, due to the fact that this is a project to wikify Spelljammer. I have done some work on Forgotten Realms Wiki, but do not wish to work on a general D&D wiki. A general wiki goes against what I was aiming to do with this project. I am interested in helping Spelljammer fans to understand the Spelljammer campaign setting. However, I am very happy for you to copy and paste content from my wiki into your own wiki, as per the licensing conditions of this wiki. I wish you the best of luck with your wiki, but I do not personally want to be part of your team. David "Big Mac" Shepheard (talk) 09:08, August 11, 2013 (UTC) :::Thank you! That I can understand very well. (Though I am quite ignorant about the legal technicalities.) Do you see any progress with regard to reactions from Wikia? At Dungeons and Dragons Wiki we have decided not to cover campaign settings where an active and/or successfull expansive wiki with comparative goals already exists, like the Forgotten Realms Wiki or Dragonlance Nexus Lexicon. Instead, at Dungeons and Dragons Wiki we would ideally provide very short articles only about topics covered by that specific wiki and the link. If Spelljammer Wiki here would become visibly active again, it could be put in the same category. Otherwise, I would strive to transfer and incorporate the material here to best use when there was time (so presumably far in the future). Either way, all the best for your goals here! Daranios (talk) 17:19, November 25, 2013 (UTC) Apologetic Querulousness Heya David, I was editing about and was wondering if I could reference sourcebooks which aren't specifically concerned with spelljammer? See the illithid page is a little stubby and there's a lot of canon on illithids a race, but not in the spelljammer campaign books or accessories. Also is the editing okay? You expressed concern about adding new content in light of the limited control over it. JohnathonDee (talk) 23:06, December 11, 2013 (UTC) :My main concern was people adding information and not providing citations. Secondary canon, that connects to Spelljammer, is great, but users need to be able to tell what factiods come from what sources. David "Big Mac" Shepheard (talk) 21:23, September 1, 2014 (UTC) dnd-wiki.org have imported Spelljammer Wiki content and are reusing it The Creative Commons licence allows anyone to take a copy of Spelljammer Wiki and that's just what dnd-wiki.org have done. (They actually imported a copy of Spelljammer Wiki way back in October 2014, but I only found out today, when a link to their wiki appeared on the page for the Hypertext d20 SRD.) They are going to adapt the content to work with their own wiki, so expect things to change around or get deleted over there. It would have been nice if they had told me they had done this, but they are not doing anything illegal. Anyhoo, if you want to see what they are doing with the content, see their Dungeons and Dragons Wiki:Spelljammer Wiki page. David "Big Mac" Shepheard (talk) 13:57, December 20, 2016 (UTC) Hi David, I'm currently 30 pages into a 5e Spelljammer conversion and I'd like to pick your brain on a few things, to make sure I'm on the right track before release. Is there another way to get in touch with you? I don't really check this wiki, and you can reach me at thesohnly@gmail.com. 05:07, January 23, 2018 (UTC) Kevin S. :Hi Kevin, : :I wish you well with your 5th Edition conversion attempt, but I don't play 5th Edition myself. I also don't really have time to send out emails to people at the moment. : :I would suggest you head over to the Spelljammer forum at The Piazza and address the entire community there. : :Good luck. : :David "Big Mac" Shepheard (talk) 00:29, January 31, 2018 (UTC) Your friendly neighborhood Wiki Manager Hi! My name is Moviesign, and I’m the Fandom Wiki Manager for Spelljammer Wiki. I am here to help the community and be a liaison to full-time Fandom staff. If you ever have a question or issue relating to the wiki, editing, styling, templates, etc., please contact me on my message wall / talk page. Here are some handy links for help with wiki features: * Galleries, Slideshows, and Sliders—ways to present images. * Tabbers—a tabbed interface to organize information. * Portable Infoboxes—concise presentation of data that works on mobile devices too. * Community CSS and JavaScript—more customization options. Questions? Let me know how I can help. —Moviesign (talk) 15:01, May 6, 2019 (UTC) PS: I've seen you around the Forgotten Realms Wiki. How is it going?